


cyclical

by lemniscate (savvyl)



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms
Genre: Drabble, Ganlink Week, Gen, M/M, not overtly shippy but i intended it to be ganlink, reincarnation theory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-07
Updated: 2015-05-07
Packaged: 2018-03-29 10:36:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3893230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/savvyl/pseuds/lemniscate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a reality in which the Triforce trio are endlessly reincarnated, and Ganondorf remembers.  For Day 3 of Ganlink Week: Unknown and Familiar.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cyclical

The first couple of lifetimes, Ganondorf had been surprised to find that, one day, in the midst of his adulthood, he could remember being someone else.

 

The next lifetime came as much less of a shock.  The awareness hit him coated in a sense of deja vu, and his hand would automatically reach for the last spot the Master Sword had run him through as determined blue eyes resounded throughout his mind.

 

The Princess remembered sometimes, it seemed, in bursts of recognition and premonition.  Once, when Ganondorf had become king of a growing desert empire and she had taken the throne of Hyrule, they had come together to establish peace.  Upon meeting one another’s eyes, they knew it would not be so.  He saw understanding cross the princess' expression as surely as he felt it--that the outside forces acting upon them would allow nothing but compliance with the cyclical nature of their very existence.

 

Why, then, did the boy never remember?  Why was he granted the privilege of forgetting every time he had killed the gerudo, while Ganondorf was stuck with so many overlapping memories of blue, blue--

 

He envied the two of them, loved by Goddesses and shielded by them.  Zelda was the avatar of Hylia, Link was beloved by the Goddess of Time--even Din, Nayru and Farore cherished them.  All Ganondorf had was the curse that made him.

 

Again and again, Ganondorf watched Link don the mantle of courage, banishing his own innocence for the sake of thousands of strangers.

 

Just once, he thought idly as the familiar blade drove upward into his throat, just once he wanted to see a Link whose innocence remained.  It was his own curse that necessitated that innocence be destroyed in the first place, but a war raged in his consciousness between a desire to see simple curiosity sated, about the way things could be if he were only able to combat his own existence, and the same cursed compulsion that made him raise a shaking hand to grasp Link’s wrist, burning with desire to corrupt.

 

Blue eyes looked up and met his, as they had every time, regardless of Ganondorf’s fate.  Whether Link destroyed him or sealed him away, he looked Ganondorf in the eye as he did it.

 

Ganondorf grinned wryly as his vision began to fade, grip slackening, the Hero spared from his corruption once more.  In the moment before his last breath struggled its way free of his exhausted lungs, he saw a spark of recognition flash in beautiful, blue, painfully familiar eyes.

 

When the Hero caught up to him in the next lifetime, he willingly bared his neck.


End file.
